NASCAR Officials have taken a strong stance on any hint of rule bending in the run up to this weekend’s Daytona 500. In the past few days:

• Ken Francis, crew chief for the No. 9 Dodge driven by Kasey Kahne, and Robbie Reiser, crew chief for the No. 17 Ford of Matt Kenseth, have been suspended for four races and fined $50,000. Their cars failed post-qualifying inspection and were sent to the back of the grid of the second Gatorade Duel. Both cars had holes that should been sealed open at the time of the inspection leading to suggestions ofd possible aerdynamic advantage.
• Kahne and Kenseth have also been penalised with the loss of 50 driver championship points, while their car owners Ray Evernham and Jack Roush were penalized 50 car owner championship points.
• Crew chiefs Rodney Childers and Josh Browne, have been suspended for two races and fined $25,000. Their drivers Scott Riggs and Elliot Sadler were also penalized 25 driver championship points while their car owners, James Rocco and Evernham, were penalized 25 car owner championship points. The cars had unapproved modifications to their rear spolier mountings.
• Michael Waltrip’s Crew chief David Hyder and the Toyota NAPA No. 55 team’s vice president of competition Bobby Kennedy were publicly ejected from Daytona International Speedway on Wednesday morning and suspended “indefinitely”. NASCAR has deleted Waltrip’s qualifying time from pole day on Sunday after finding a susbstance in the intake manifold that is beleived to be a horsepower enhancer of some sort (some reports have suggested it may have been traces of aviation fuel). The only way Waltrip, a two-time winner of the 500, can now qualify for the race is through a strong perfomance in today’s Duel Gatorade events. Hyder was also fined $100,000 – the biggest fine in NASCAR history to date.

In other NASCAR news CEO Brian France has stated his company is carefully looking at their international expansion, speaking on Tuesday at a “State of the Sport” teleconference.France has mentioned Europe, Latin America and Asia as possible future targets for the series to grow abroad. In fact this weekend’s Daytona 500 will be the first NASCAR race to be broadcast in full on terrestrial television in the UK. (Information combined from several articles originally posted on Autosport.com)

The Speed Blog will be live blogging during the Daytona 500 – so join us on Sunday for updates as the race unfolds.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 4:27 pm and is filed under NASCAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.